The potential oil shortage, rising oil prices and the need to import vast amounts of oil from unstable foreign suppliers coupled with concerns over pollution are providing the impetus to develop a hydrogen based economy. There is a hydrogen initiative research program in the United States and in other western industrial nations. The goal of these programs is to develop technologies needed for hydrogen fueled vehicles.
Existing problems include: a practical way to produce large, industrial quantities of hydrogen, the creation of a commercial distribution system, and methods to pump and store large amounts of hydrogen on a vehicle. At present, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 110 tons of hydrogen per day would be required to replace the consumption of 200 million gallons of gasoline consumed per day. At this time, the storage tanks required are larger than the vehicle, even at immense pressures of 10,000 PSI or greater.
There are no energy efficient methods to industrially produce the hydrogen required. Methods to produce, distribute, pump or store enough hydrogen for fuel cell powered vehicles to travel a minimum of 300 miles before refueling do not exist.
Tens of billions of dollars have been spent worldwide to solve these problems. Some experts estimate that the realization of fuel cell powered electric vehicles, and the infrastructure to refuel them, may be 30 years and 30 billion dollars or more in the future.
The teachings of the present invention restructures the problem and provides a solution to the problems of production, distribution and storage of hydrogen required for fuel cell powered vehicles, and negates the need for a new fueling infrastructure.